Waste(d)!

AMRO is a biennial community festival in Linz that probes and engages with new challenges between digital culture, art, everyday life, education, politics, and taking action.

This year’s festival “Waste(d)!” is devoted to aspects of the conditions of our digital infosphere that are increasingly perceived as complex. The act of saving, deleting, or resurfacing data and information has taken on a life of its own, is monitored, monetized and waste valuable natural resources.

What is the cultural, social, philosophical, ecological, and economic significance of producing, saving, deleting, and resurfacing data?

Agbogbloshie is a district in the teeming metropolis of Accra in West-African Ghana. The world’s largest electro-waste dump is located here. Twenty-two hard drives brought back to Austria from this dump are the starting point for the exhibition. Alongside the material and exploitative dark sides of the dirty business with electronic waste, the exhibition brings together artistic positions dealing with the value of digital information and our constant production of data. The saving, deleting and resurfacing of information is part of our everyday life. We leave not only material traces that have disastrous effects on people and our environment, but also digital traces, the value of which is to be called into question.
A project by Linda Kronman and Andreas Zingerle (KairUs) realised in cooperation with servus.at.